Ozren Grabarić
Ozren Grabarić is a Croatian actor. He has been celebrated as one of the greatest Croatian actors of the 21st-century.
Since 2006, he has been a member of the Gavella Drama Theatre ensemble, where he has reached immense acclaim for both his comedic and dramatic roles in A Midsummer Night's Dream, Peer Gynt, King Richard the Third, Tartuffe, Crime and Punishment, Antigone and Three Sisters. He has also performed in other Zagreb theatres, including the Zagreb Youth Theatre, where his performance in Hinkemann as the MC is held as his magnum opus. He is also a docent at the Academy of Dramatic Art in Zagreb, where he works as a professor.
Grabarić is also known for his starring roles in films Koko and the Ghosts, Vegetarian Cannibal, Hives, :hr:Sve najbolje |Sve najbolje and the television comedy :hr:Moja tri zida|Moja tri zida. He is also noted for his extensive voice-work in the field of radio drama and Croatian dubs of animated feature films.
Early life
Grabarić was born on 17 July 1980 in Zagreb. His father was a chemistry professor. When he was 12, he joined an amateur acting group called "Ribnjak" in his native town where he performed for a year. Aged 13, he moved to Barcelona, Spain with his family for his father's work. In Barcelona, he finished eight grade and high school. He remembers his youth as a grim time going to school in a new environment without knowing the language. Through studying and reading, he managed to adapt, but left Spain after he turned 18.In 1999, he returned to Zagreb where he tried the entrance exam for the Academy of Dramatic Art. He became a student after one try at the exam and graduated in 2006, in the class of Neva Rošić. He graduated with the role of Urban from the Miroslav Krleža play :hr:Leda |Leda, a role he would later reprise in the Mala scene theatre.
Grabarić speaks Croatian, English, Spanish and Catalan. He is an avid reader who enjoys the works of Fyodor Dostoyevski, Marcel Proust, Krleža, Anton Chekhov and James Joyce. He also enjoys cooking.
Career
Theatre
Upon obtaining a diploma from the Academy of Dramatic Art, in 2006 he was hired as a member of the Gavella Drama Theatre ensemble, where he became one of the most successful and versatile performers. His first role in the theatre was in a production of The Master and Margarita.He performed his first leading role in the Travelling Theatre Troup's production of The Lady in Distress, directed by Relja Bašić. Since then he starred in a series of leading roles in the Mala Scena Theatre in productions such as Proof, Life X 3 and Humble Boy, which was also part of the first English Language Theatre project in Croatia. Among other things he performed in the play The Fourth Sister at the Dubrovnik Summer Festival, Dr. Dolittle in Zagreb Youth Theatre, In the Night, directed by Tomislav Pavković in Kufer Theatre, Hamlet as Guildenstern and King Lear as Edgar in the Ulysses Theatre, Baal in the Istrian National Theatre, directed by Slovenian theatre director Eduard Miler, Bride of the Wind and Vassa Zheleznova in the Croatian National Theatre in Zagreb and the children's play Telephone as a part of the Thearto project directed by Zijah Sokolović.
His breakthrough role came as Nick Bottom in the 2009 Aleksandar Popovski-directed version of A Midsummer Night's Dream in Gavella, for which he won the Ardalion Award and the Croatian Theatre Award for Best Actor in a Supporting Role. After Bottom, he was cast as the title characters in Tartuffe and Peer Gynt. He has since performed over twenty critically successful roles in the drama theatre, including Bokčilo in Dundo Maroje, Creon in Antigone, the title king in Richard III, Puba Fabriczy in The Glembays, Daniel Daréus in As It Is in Heaven, Andrej in Three Sisters and Odysseus in The Iliad. In 2013, he performed an Innokenty Smoktunovsky-inspired Porfiriy Petrovich in Crime and Punishment, starring alongside Franjo Dijak as Raskolnikov and Živko Anočić as Razumikhin.
In 2015, he performed a multi-lingual version of the Gogol short story Diary of a Madman. The sixty-minute monodrama, featuring English, Croatian and Spanish soliloquies, was performed in North Macedonia, Croatia, Montenegro, Bulgaria, Romania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia and Slovenia. Theatre critic Milivoj Jukić praised the chemistry between Grabarić and the play's director, Marijan Nećak, which was reflected in the mature and emotionally intense performance of schizophrenia. The PUF Theatre Festival in Pula gave Grabarić the Gran Prix Award for "the mistral comparison of the individual schizophrenia and analysis of social position and identity through the classic work of Gogol's short story." He also received the Apollo Prize at the INFANT Novi Sad Theatre Festival.
In 2016, he performed in an adaptation of the Ernst Toller work :hr:Hinkemann|Hinkemann, directed by :hr:Igor Vuk Torbica|Igor Vuk Torbica, in the :hr:Zagrebačko kazalište mladih|Zagreb Youth Theatre. His starring role as the master of ceremonies, alongside actor Rakan Rushaidat as the title role, received immense critical acclaim, with many calling Hinkemann Grabarić's magnum opus. Called a "cultural milestone", critics who have expressed praise for his portrayal include Ana Tasić, Bojan Munjin, Nataša Govedić, Bojana Radović, Milivoj Jukić, Robin Mikulić and Andrija Tunjić.
He played Shylock in the 2016 Split National Theatre's production of The Merchant of Venice, for the Split Summer Games. Directed by Russian theatre practitioner Aleksandar Ogarjov, the play was presented in the theatre and the Oceanography Institute near Marjan, Split. Starring as a guest opposite Elvis Bošnjak and Goran Marković, his "flesh and blood" portrayal of the Jewish moneylender was singled out for admiration in the adaptation by Maja Hrgović and Siniša Nikić.
In October 2019, he played Miroslav Krleža to critical praise in the Croatian Music Institute, as part of the monodrama Miroslav Krleža o hrvatskoj književnosti.
Film
Grabarić is also lauded for his numerous film roles. He has starred in Sleep Sweet, My Darling, Koko and the Ghosts, Blurs, Iris, Vegetarian Cannibal and :hr:Sve najbolje |Sve najbolje, the latter of which was screened at the 2016 Pula Film Festival. He reprised his role as Josip Milić from Koko and the Ghosts in the franchise's sequels Zagonetni dječak and Ljubav ili smrt.In 2012, he received acclaim for appearing in a leading role as Matija in the Croatian anthology film Hives. The commercially successful film had its national premiere at the 59th Pula Film Festival and its international premiere at the 60th San Sebastián International Film Festival.
He has appeared in supporting roles in films including the drama Majka asfalta, the children's film Životinjsko carstvo and the comedy Moj dida je pao s Marsa. For Moj dida je pao s Marsa he provided a voice and motion-capture performance. In July 2019, the film was screened at the Pula Film Festival. He also performed as a leading man in the 2006 short psychological thriller Sin moj! as troubled physician Andrej Bacelj.
He is set to have a starring role in the 2021 film Sixth Bus.
Television
On television, he is known for portraying a fictional version of himself in the widely popular comedy series :hr:Moja tri zida|Moja tri zida. He starred in the show alongside prolific actress Jadranka Đokić. He has also appeared in supporting roles in :hr:Stipe u gostima|Stipe u gostima, Zakon!, Bitange i princeze, Naša mala klinika and :hr:Ko te šiša|Ko te šiša.He portrayed the gawky and eccentric professor Djuro Marksist in the hit televised comedy Crno-bijeli svijet, considered one of the most popular Croatian television comedies of the 21st-century.
In April 2020, Grabarić appeared in a leading role as the schizophrenic and passive-agressive Dražen Flajpan on the televised series Director, alongside Mia Melcher, Slavko Sobin and Mile Kekin. Created by Bitange i princeze and Crno bijeli svijet director Goran Kulenović, the show received mostly positive reviews for its originality, humor and acting performances.
Voice-work in radio and animation
He has filmed over a hundred radio dramas, narrated audiobooks and provided voice-work for numerous Croatian-language versions of animated motion pictures.His notable radio drama credits include works by Irena Vrkljan, Fyodor Sologub, Leconte de Lisle, Ezra Pound, Jan Neruda, Danijel Dragojević, Ante Kovačić, Miroslav Krleža, Leo Tolstoy, Albert Camus, Alfred Döblin, Benno Meyer-Wehlack, Luigi Pirandello, Gaius Valerius Catullus, Ernest Hemmingway and Alexander Pushkin. In 2017, Grabarić won the Croatian Actor Award for Best Performance in a Radio Drama.
His distinct nasal yet resonant tenor-baritone voice, similar to the one of Relja Bašić, landed him prolific roles within animation. In 2004, he voiced the protagonist Oto in the Croatian animated family series Nora Fora. In Croatian dubbings, he has voiced characters including Marty the Zebra in the Madagascar film series, Eddie in the Ice Age franchise, Barry Benson in Bee Movie, Lalo in Ratatouille, Crane in the Kung Fu Panda films, Randall Boggs in both Monsters, Inc. and Monsters University, the title character in Megamind, Le Fou in Beauty and the Beast, Gobber in the How to Train Your Dragon trilogy, King Candy / Turbo and M. Bison in Wreck-It Ralph, Duke Weasleton in Zootopia and Double Dan in Ralph Breaks the Internet. In 2007, he voiced Michaelangelo in the Croatian version of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles film.
During his time as a student at the Academy of Dramatic Art, already amassing dubbing roles in commercially successful films he also provided voice-work for Wade the Duck in the U.S. Acres series, complete with the Garfield franchise, with Filip Šovagović as the title feline and Franjo Dijak as Jon Arbuckle. He is the official Croatian voice for Casper the Friendly Ghost.
He also provided the voice of King Louie in the 2016 Croatian dub of the 1967 classic The Jungle Book.
Accolades
Grabarić has widely been called the greatest Croatian actor of his generation. He was proclaimed a "protagonist of the Ex-Yugoslav acting quatrefoil" alongside Nebojša Glogovac from Belgrade, Jernej Šugman from Ljubljana and Nikola Ristanovski from Skopje.During his two decade long career, Grabarić has won over thirty prominent acting awards. These include two Croatian Actor Awards, two Teatar.hr Awards, three Ardalion Awards, a Viminacium Award, five Gavella Europlakat Awards, two Veljko Marčić Awards, a Golden Laugh Award and an Apollo Gran Prix at the Novi Sad Theatre Festival. In 2019, he was also nominated for a Golden Studio Award for his role as Puba Fabriczy in the Miroslav Medimurec-directed play The Glembays.